HD Backup to NAS

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kornflake

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#142946 29-Mar-2014 17:58

Hi All

The Mother in-law is after a nightly or weekly back up software, that can back up to a NAS drive (talked her out of a USB drive) on the same network. She is not too computer literate but i can set it up for her, in a set and forget way. Can anyone recommend a good backup program, that can ideally, over right the last backup i.e only records the changes since last run? or am i asking to much. Do not want the NAS getting full, and her deleting something she shouldn't.

I have looked at Paragon and AOMEI Backupper but not sure if they can just record the changes only. Any guidance is greatly appreciated.

Cheers

gregmcc

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#1015144 29-Mar-2014 19:14

I use Norton Ghost, you can set the type of backup, full, incremental, also you can specificy the amount of space uses, so when it reaches xx% it deletes older backups.

I do a nightly backup incremental and once a month a full backup

blakamin

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#1015145 29-Mar-2014 19:14

What brand of NAS?
A lot of them come with the ability to select folders for backup and it will do it itself.

shk292

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#1015146 29-Mar-2014 19:18

I use MS Synctoy. Fully configurable and you can then have a scheduled task to run it as often as required

kornflake

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#1015150 29-Mar-2014 19:34

qnap ts212, a preloved model.

Techexpress

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#1015333 30-Mar-2014 12:03

Give qnap's netbak replicator a go. License cost is $0.0 has schedules and optional email reports. see http://www.qnap.com/en/?sn=998

QNAP NETBAK

driller2000

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#1015334 30-Mar-2014 12:06

i use syncbackfree - works a treat

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1101

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#1017030 2-Apr-2014 10:40

Make sure she knows to CLOSE all programs & docs & email programs before the backup starts

Robocopy batch file backup. You can choose & exclude directories
Put the batch file in the scheduled tasks.
Can also create logs, but I dont bother with logs as the log file just gets too big or is never used/checked

Make sure the NAS has a static IP no matter what backup software you use
And check that the backup is actually working & can recover a test file
:-)

jnimmo

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#1017061 2-Apr-2014 11:13

I'd recommend something like Cloudberry Desktop, or perhaps Oops!Backup or ShadowProtect Desktop
Depends what the reasoning for wanting the backups is (i.e. to protect against accidental deletion, to be able to restore a previous version of a document, to protect against Crytolocker, to protect against hard disk failure, to protect against fire?)

Cloudberry supports local (NAS etc) backups with multiple file versions
The reason I say Cloudberry is that down the track she may like to have a form of offsite backup also, so you could use the same product to backup to the NAS but also maybe backup the most important files to Amazon Glacier without needing a different product

One thing that is very important no matter what product you use, don't map the Backup share on the NAS as a drive in Windows Explorer. If you do, Cryptolocker and similar viruses can easily go through and destroy your backups. Just set the backup software to point straight at the share path. Even better, create a separate user on the NAS who is the only account which can access the backup share, and then give those credentials to the backup software to use too.

gundar

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#1017070 2-Apr-2014 11:18

I'll +1 using native tools and functions. I suggest using the QNAP software that came with the NAS or using Windows built in backup. Either have worked well for me in the past and are free.

mclean

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#1017107 2-Apr-2014 12:01

driller2000: i use syncbackfree - works a treat

+1 for SyncBack. I love it.

The only thing to watch is if you have a program that runs all the time (like Outlook in my case) the scheduled backup (or synchronisation) skips the locked data files. I get round it by having a separate SyncBack profile for the Outlook data files that's scheduled to run on start-up before Outlook starts.